The POTA families of Godhra

The doors of homes in Rehmat Nagar, Godhra, are opened by children, and sometimes by women. Men
are rarely to be seen around. The world outside the settlement refers to them as "POTA families", a
description that encapsulates their precarious present and future.
Deepa A
has more.

The scrapyard that leads to Rehmat Nagar in Godhra, in Panchmahal district in Gujarat, appears to be an indicator of the squalor that one's about to witness.
A dusty, unpaved path serves as the access road to this settlement, comprising of hovels with red-tiled roofs. A few children and women are to be found on the
middle of the road, next to a water container, washing vessels or filling steel pots. The doors are opened by children, and sometimes by women, if they are
home; men are rarely to be seen around. Most of the tiny shacks are bereft of
furniture, the starkness of the rooms reflecting the silences and absences that
today mark the lives of Rehmat Nagar's inhabitants.

Rehmat Nagar in Godhra, one of the settlements from where many Muslim men have been arrested under POTA.
Pic: Deepa A.

The world outside the settlement refers to them as "POTA families", a
description that encapsulates their present and future, and one that has
redefined their perhaps already precarious existence. On February 27, 2002,
after 59 people were killed in a fire that engulfed the S-6 coach of the
Sabarmati Express at Godhra station, the otherwise inconspicuous town catapulted
into notoriety. Godhra became the reason for targeting the Muslim community in
Gujarat - a Muslim mob is said to have burnt the coach carrying Hindu karsevaks
and in the ensuing riots, over a 1,000 people, a majority of them Muslims,
were killed.

In Godhra, the police arrested many Muslim men living in areas close to the
railway station and charged them under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA)
for burning the train. The women at Rehmat Nagar, which is about four kilometres
from the railway station, say the police turned up on the evening of the
horrific Sabarmati Express tragedy, barged into the houses and picked up men -
their husbands or their sons - at random. There are 14 "POTA families" here,
women and children whose lives were upturned by the Act that was repealed by the
Manmohan Singh-led United Progressive Alliance government in 2004, but under
which their loved ones continue to be charged. The women, who once never stepped out of the confines of their homes, have started working and it's on their mettle that life moves on. They face ostracism both within and outside the community, as fear of harassment by state agencies prevents even those who want to help from stepping forward.

POTA, which came into force in 2002, was called "draconian" for many reasons,
including the fact that it allowed the detention of suspects for up to 180 days
without the filing of charges in court. In Gujarat, POTA is known to have been
widely used to target the Muslim minority, says an Amnesty International report
titled 'Five years on - the bitter and uphill struggle for justice in Gujarat',
released in March 2007. It notes, "Human rights activists point to the
dramatically different treatment of those accused in the burning of (sic) Godhra
train compartment - the incident which is alleged to have sparked the communal
violence against Muslims. These 87 persons [arrested under POTA] have remained
in pre-trial detention for the last four years - despite several legal attempts
by human rights organizations to secure bail. All of them are Muslim." The
report points out that the accused continue to be held under the provisions of
the Act even after a POTA review committee appointed by the Indian government
recommended in 2005 that the charges against them - under POTA - be dropped.

Some would call the transformation of women, from shadows to the heads of
households, empowering, and perhaps it is.

But such contemplations seem academic and indeed futile in the face of the poverty one sees at Rehmat Nagar, and the sheer helplessness and sadness one encounters in each house.

J S Bandukwala, a Vadodara-based activist who faced mob frenzy during the riots,
says the "POTA families" are suffering terribly. "Most of them have been
ruined," says Bandukwala, a campaigner against communalism and a retired faculty
member of the M S University in Vadodara. "The education of their children has
suffered - education itself has become a luxury." When he visited the families
in Rehmat Nagar earlier this year, he found that the whole place was "just one
big garbage dump, it was stinking". Even the little, if any, monetary help that
comes the way of families is adequate only for meeting food expenses, that too
for a while.

In Nafisa Anwar Ansari's one-room house in Rehmat Nagar, the sooty bricks
stacked to one side to create a small kiln, point to aspirations to rise above
the wretchedness of the dark tenement. The kiln was used for baking biscuits,
something her family had been doing for just over a year when her two sons were
arrested under POTA. Nafisa Ansari is over 60 and blind, and she weeps as she
speaks of the ordeal suffered by her two sons, one a 40-year-old and the other
25. The elder son has four children while the younger one was newly married at
that time. The grandchildren, she says, aren't going to school. "They do some
painting work, which comes up once every two weeks or so," she adds. The children
haven't seen their father, Shabir Ansari, since he was arrested in 2002.

As Bandukwala points out, those arrested under POTA have been in the Sabarmati
jail in Ahmedabad for well over five years. Their bail applications are
currently pending in the Supreme Court, but meanwhile, their families find
themselves unable to even bear the expenses of commuting to Ahmedabad once in a
while.

Rehana Badam's husband, 28-year-old Shabir Badam, was picked up six months after
the Sabarmati Express tragedy. She manages to go to Ahmedabad once in three
months. "It costs me about Rs.400, how can I spend that much money often?" says
the 24-year-old mother of two. To make ends meet, she washes clothes in
households in Bhoiwada, which is about two kilometres from Rehmat Nagar, earning
Rs.500-600 per month. She also works at a nearby pickle factory whenever it's
operational - usually a few months of the year - making about Rs.40 daily. Her
two children go to a government-run Gujarati-medium school but she has to deny
them an opportunity to meet their father as it's too expensive for all of them
to travel to Ahmedabad.

Twenty-eight-year-old Usmabanu Yasin Malik, who has three children, has seen her
husband five times in five years. She narrates a familiar story of juggling jobs
to make a living after her husband's arrest. He used to sell samosas at a small
shop, and was picked up by the police on February 27 (at 5.30 pm, she
remembers). Usmabanu Malik, who had never worked before, now cleans utensils and
floors in various houses and also does odd jobs at the scrapyard, making about
Rs.600 every month.

Panchmahal-based activist Mukhtar Mohammad, who himself has been targeted by
state agencies several times, says the families have been driven to desperation
not only because of their financial problems but also the exclusion they face.
"There's no money for food, or for the education of the children," he says. "And
if anyone tries to help the families, the police harasses them, saying 'you are
helping the accused'." This sentiment is echoed by 30-year-old Saeed Umerji,
whose father Maulana Umerji, a known community leader in Godhra, was arrested
under POTA. "We were doing relief work here for over a year after the riots when
my father was arrested," says the bitter son, who has followed the POTA cases so
religiously that he has on his fingertips all the dates and judgements delivered
in the matter, be it in the sessions court, the special POTA court, the Gujarat
High Court or the Supreme Court.

Latifa Giteli, an activist based in Godhra, with a child at her home. Pic: Deepa A.

Afsana Banu doesn't keep track of the circuitous route the cases have taken.
Instead, she has been struggling with responsibilities that came at an
unexpected time in her life, after her husband Feroz Khan Gulab Khan, who used
to work at a hotel, was arrested under POTA. "None of us used to work earlier
but we have all been forced to now," says the 30-year-old, who washes clothes at
some houses. Tracing their routine, she explains that the women make food at
night and give it to the children in the morning; in the afternoon, they usually
get something to eat at the houses where they work, which they unfailingly bring
home to share with their children. Afsana Banu has three children, who all go to a government-run
school now, but she does not know for how long. She feels that it will be difficult
to bear the expenses for their studies. "I can't pay the fees
for all of them," she says.

Some would call the transformation of women, from shadows to the heads of
households, empowering, and perhaps it is. But such contemplations seem academic
and indeed futile in the face of the poverty one sees at Rehmat Nagar, and the
sheer helplessness and sadness one encounters in each house. Social activist
Latifa Giteli, who started a school in Godhra with a few others after the riots,
is possibly one of the few who understand the predicament of these women. Giteli
became involved in social work during the 2002 riots, when she saw the horrific
situation of the victims - particularly the women - at relief camps.

Driven by a desire to help, and with the support of a non-government organisation called
Anandi, Giteli picked up legal knowledge and trained to be a social worker. She has
helped the "POTA families" but a repressive state arrested her husband in 2004,
presumably for her involvement with those otherwise ignored. "My husband is a government
servant [he works for VSNL] and he was detained for 11 months under false
charges. Anyone who helps POTA families is harassed - look at my own case," she
says. Though her husband was eventually released, Giteli recounts the harrowing
time she had when he was behind bars. "No lawyer wanted to take up the case,
they said they would be harassed too if they defended him. People were so afraid
after his arrest that my own relatives were scared of meeting me," she says.

Giteli says her training to be an activist helped her when her husband was
arrested. This spirited woman certainly found her calling after the brutalities
of the 2002 violence. But in the gloomy expanse of Rehmat Nagar, the lone
earning members of the "POTA families" are a long way away from finding similar
solace or even a reprieve.

Deepa A06 November 2007

Deepa A is a New Delhi-based journalist. The report is part of series from a study on communal violence and education funded by the Sanskriti-Prabha Dutt Fellowship in Journalism, 2006.

M S H SHEIKH
This is real picture of the state asisted terror to the families. This is the nacked truth of Godhra and post Godhra violance. Where is the muslim organisations??? where is so called social workers for these families from muslim community??? Has anyone started the rehabilitation or resettlement of the children of the POTA victims???

November 21 2007, 10:17 AM ·
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shashi m kumari
Godhra train tragedy is truly a bolch on our society and as always its the children and women who bear the brunt, innocent, helpless, totally under the mercy of politicians and judiciary.

November 28 2007, 11:44 AM ·
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Atul Bhatia
It is really heartening to see the plight of Godhra victims. Surprisingly enough, BJP is giving deaf ears to the predicament of such people and has promised the enactment of POTA again if voted to power. I appeal to everybody to ensure such a thing never happens again by not supporting the supporter of POTA

September 25 2008, 5:14 AM ·
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Pardeep K. Gupta
What to say! The state is responsible for the plight of dependents of alleged accused. In the name of revenge for the "Ram Sevaks" who burnt alive in Sabarmati Train. Though Gujarat Police has not established till date how the train got fire, yet 1000 muslims were lynched by the avengers. The innocent indian citizens who were killed after the incident of Sabarmati Train incident still await justice. We cried for justice for Aarushi or Somaya or Jessica but we forget to cry for justice for the inncocents perhaps because they were muslim Indians. Shame on us being humans.

October 19 2008, 6:49 AM ·
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